We met Aaron Swartz in spring of 2012 at the Freedom 2 Connect conference in Washington D.C. As one of the keynote speakers, he told his story about how he and a group of passionate Internet users rose up against a Goliath of government and corporate interests to defeat the infamous SOPA/PIPA bill. (You can watch his full speech here.) With calm understated confidence, Aaron reminded all of us of the power we have within ourselves to effect change in the system.

After his speech, we approached Aaron to ask him if he would be willing to share his thoughts with us on our documentary about past, present and endangered future of the Internet. Like he was with so many others, Aaron was incredibly open and generous with his time. He gave us our first official interview for our film, and we know that “War for the Web” will be that much better because of his wisdom and knowledge.

We share with you some unedited excerpts of Aaron’s insights, in which he discusses growing up in the age of the Internet, the importance of the freedom of speech and access to information, and how we as individuals are responsible for the future of the Internet.

what a hypocrite. i notice he didnt open source the code for reddit, and was happy to pocket the millions paid by conde nast for that software and web site. somehow its an abomination that musicians and writers and filmmakers want to be paid for the creative work, but software engineers demanding the exact same thing are heroes? were the stock shares in reddit somehow real property and music is not?

Hi Saint Lebowitz, Aaron was only one of several partners in Reddit when it was sold, and it is unfair to say that he believed software code is more “real property” than creative works.

From our conversation with him (as well as many other documented sources), he believed that an open access to information and the sharing of work was essential to innovation. As he says in this interview, everything new is created from something before it. But he has never said that creatives shouldn’t be paid for their work. In fact, he believed that there were opportunities to create collective licensing agreements to ensure that creatives were paid for work they create, and he was instrumental in setting up the Creative Commons license to help people share their work in a manner suitable for them.